1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to enabling a higher-level software application to control a robot's motion through a generic motion interface.
2. Description of Background Art
Robot motion interfaces do exist, but they are either hardware-specific or support only very simple (non-humanoid) robots. As a result, the motion of a humanoid robot is generally controlled directly via its device drivers. Developers write their own driver interfaces to the specific robot. These driver interfaces are then used by applications in order to control the robot's motion. It is difficult to create these interfaces due to the lack of knowledge about the internal workings of the robot's proprietary software and hardware. The interfaces themselves tend to be very complex in order to provide access to the robot's various capabilities. Also, if the robot's hardware changes, the driver interfaces (and the applications using them) also need to change. This is inefficient because the same algorithms have to be reimplemented every time the hardware changes.
What is needed is a generic interface that enables a higher-level software application to control a robot's motion.